(Ir)religiosity

I’ve been out of the loop for a few weeks now.  My original “week” long break from blogging turned into two — and it’s been great.  I didn’t make as big of dent in my stack of books as I would have liked, but oh well.  Time off is good.

I’m sure it’s old news to most everyone now, but a piece by Michael Spencer (the Internet Monk) in the Christian Science Monitor titled “The Coming Evangelical Collapse” has made asizable splash in the blogosphere over the past few weeks.
His predictions are bleak (or encouraging, depending on your point of view.

In the opening paragraph alone he claims that a “major collapse” of evangelicalism will occur within 10 years that will “fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West” resulting in a new “anti-Christian chapter” of our history in which “intolerance to Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible.”

Why?  He lists seven reasons, chief among them the reality that evangelicalism has — rightly or wrongly — been close related to fundamentalism and the Christian Right resulting in politicization and a reputation for intolerance and anti-intellectualism. As Spencer succinclty observes, evangelicals “fell for the trap of believing in a cause more than a faith.” As we saw in last presidential election, the political power of the Christian Right is crumbling.  Combine that with the rising disenchantment of many “cradle evangelicals” with what they perceive to be the politicization and co-option of a vibrant and robust faith, and the outlook for evangelicalism as a cultural and religious monolith is not good. Read the rest of this entry »